Add comments below.

I'm glad that the coup in Venezuela failed. I'm glad that the US media has egg on its face for not making it clear that the coup was the usurpation of power from a democratically elected constitution.

However, let's not pretend that Chavez is a GOOD guy. He's better than the upper-class, but he's still not ideal.

Why do I say that? Well he's been in power for a good few years now and there is STILL AN UPPER_CLASS which has enough power to nearly mount a coup. Conversely there are still a lot of poor people.

Chavez is definitely a cult-of-personality populist. He has made some good socialist-leaning reforms. But he is still presiding over a Capitalist economy.

So, although we should be happy that worse people have been kept out of power we should be slow to acclaim him as some sort of WunderFuhrer.

The State Dept. was almost euphoric when it praised the military coup that put oil chief Carmona in charge, after the generals kidnapped legally-elected Pres. Chavez.

But only 48 hours later, thanks to an aroused citizenry as well as principled soldiers, the "Coups R Us"CIA-inspired(& soon to be proven plotters) power grab came to an abrupt end.

So where was our "highest poll rating" leader of the "free world"? Gone AWOL & hiding from the media, Bush League junior dared not face the American public. Instead, he trotted out his token Afro-American underling, Auntie Jamima Condo Rice, to sound the usual Imperialist threat:

Chavez, if you don't kowtow to our "free market" dictates, we will make life for your people miserable thru our(U.S. gov't) destabilization campaigns.

But the world has already seen thru the hypocrisy of the Washington Axis of Evil, for even previously-sycophantic Latin American nations would not join the Bush League in welcoming an illegal military coup.

Poor George, he was so disheartened that he went AWOL just as his coveted plan went AWRY! Will this be the beginning of the end for his thousand-year "permanent War"?

My favorite line in the LA Times article (April 14, "Interim Venezuelan President Resigns") was when the author accused Chavez of filling the National Assembly and the Supreme Court with his allies, "in part by holding frequent elections and referendums."

In a democracy? Chavez held elections and referendums? How dare he?!

I thought in a democracy a bunch of unelected judges ignore the vote, pick the leaders, and the rest of us just sit back and take it. Least that's the way it works in the "greatest democracy in the world."

"reader",

don't you know that the only valid elections and governments are the ones that support the US elites? Why do you think we had Vietnam, Grenada, Libya, Chile, Nicaragua to name but a few.

Really, you're going to have to drop your irrational left-wing bias if you want to understand current events!

This latest chapter in Rockefeller and oil hacking in Venezuela is typical of its anti-democratic, old regime politics. David Rockefeller, the head of the pack, may now be failing--he is 85 years old, scarcely competent at an executive level. When the World Trade Center went down, Bin Laden (also a corporate family scion) no doubt had David Rockefeller on his mind. Surely, the crime was tragic, horrific, but we must scrutinize the motives behind it in order to understand it. Being from Saudi Arabia, Bin Laden reviled Rockefellers for propping up the monarchy (which Bin Laden's family profited by, incidentally--after the soldier towers in Saudi Arabia were bombed by a Bin Laden associate, the Bin Laden family got the construction contract to rebuild them, believe it or not). Rockefeller has clearly been a prime target all along. Reportedly, the Saudi royal government now wants to cease its prime concession of oil contracts to the old Rockefeller family of companies--they want to open it to higher bids by European and other competitors, which suggests that David (the last wealthy prince of the Rockefeller family) is now seen as feeble-minded, essentially over with. Combined, the World Trade attack, the Saudi move to unseat his corporate highness (David) from the gravy train, and now, the news that Trilateral/Rockefeller-related designs in Venezuela have laid another bad egg. This time there is no Cold War to rationalize murder-regime politics in terms of. Again, who could dismiss the loss of innocent life of 9/11? Nonetheless, at present, we may be seeing the demise of David Rockefeller's behind-the-scenes TLC/CFR reign over misinformed, grotesquely exploited "commoners."